Meijer to replace 28th/Kalamazoo Ave store

[Rybak 187]

Well they are finally doing it. Meijer store at Kalamazoo Avenue and 28th Street SE will be rebuilt

[tamias6]

Well they are finally doing it. Meijer store at Kalamazoo Avenue and 28th Street SE will be rebuilt

It's about time!! That old store may have served its customers well but with today's intense retail world with the likes of Wal-Mart and Target bearing down on everybody, its time to replace that old horse with something more state of the art.

One the things that's got me puzzled is that Meijer has opted to do a same site store replacement ala the Plainfeild Ave. location. Even if the new store is to be smaller than the existing building, there is no room on the property to do that. The article mentions that the new store would be built behind the old one. How? There is a subdivision 150 feet to the south of the store. A new meijer store is about 350'-375' deep. Plus additional room would be needed to move construction equipment around. Does Meijer intend to buy up much that subdivision and add that land to its existing property?

[tamias6]

Here's a rough prediction of what the 28th street and Kalamazoo Ave. Meijer may look like if Meijer pulls off its plans for that store.

This is based on information contained in the linked article a couple of posts back. The new store in this model is based on the proposed 156,000 sq. ft Bear Creek store to be built just outside Petosky, MI.

As this model suggests, Meijer would have to buy out much of the subdivision behind the old store. This would provide the room to accommodate the new store and allow for a future expansion of the new store to 192,000 sq. ft. if or when the need to add on comes. The old store would be demoed to make way for a new main parking lot while the old stores parking lot makes way for 3-4 out-lots for small tenants such as backs and restaurants. Lastly meijer could buy out the old furniture store next to the old Chrysler dealership and replace it with a detention pound to collect storm drain run off from the store site.

[mejane]

Meijer now owns the property directly south of its back lot - the white house on the hill as well as the

outbuildings - what used to be a chicken coop. For several years Meijer has been monitoring gas

leaking from its gas station tanks under Kalamazoo Avenue and appearing under the property just

mentioned. They had many, many drill holes on the property, including the basement of the home,

because the gas had leaked so badly. Believe me, the owners of that property received a hefty amount

of money as compensation, not to mention Meijer had been after that property for years.

So who knows how many other lots have been affected - perhaps to Meijer's ultimate benefit?

[tamias6]

Meijer now owns the property directly south of its back lot - the white house on the hill as well as the

outbuildings - what used to be a chicken coop. For several years Meijer has been monitoring gas

leaking from its gas station tanks under Kalamazoo Avenue and appearing under the property just

mentioned. They had many, many drill holes on the property, including the basement of the home,

because the gas had leaked so badly. Believe me, the owners of that property received a hefty amount

of money as compensation, not to mention Meijer had been after that property for years.

So who knows how many other lots have been affected - perhaps to Meijer's ultimate benefit?

Very good tidbit of info. I know exactly the property you are talking about. Assuming that meijer has not or will not purchase any of the subdivision behind the store, The white house /chicken coop property and the existing store's garden center area will provide just enough room for a building footprint of 80-95,000 sq. ft. plus an 18,000 sq. ft. garden center. Still that's nowhere near enough room for a conventional meijer store even the smallest layout which is 156,000 sq. ft. ...Buuuutttt, what if Meijer intends to replace the old 28th street/K'zoo store with its first ever multilevel store? Let's do some math. 156,000 sq ft evenly divided into 2 levels equates to a building with a 78,000 sq. ft. foot print which will fit quite nicely in white house/chicken coop property and the existing store's garden center area with room to spare. In addition Meijer's chief competitors, Target and Walmart, have successfully built multilevel stores. Let's not forget the new 2 story D&W flagship store Sparten Foods is planning on for the former Dutler Foods site located on the east end of Medical Mile. Plus with the availability of special escalators able to transport shopping carts from one level to another, there is no excuse not to build a multilevel store. The only real obstacles that might hamper Meijer from building a multi level store are the slight cost per sq. ft premium of building a multilevel store vs. a conventional single level store of equivalent square footage and potential bottle necks to operational efficiency and traffic flow caused by stairs, escalators, and elevators.

Will we be shopping in a multilevel meijer store in 2010? The way things are looking and the tight conditions of the store site even with the white house/chicken coop property added into the mix, I'm compelled to say that scenario is not out of the question.

I am working on a prediction model of a 2 story replacement store. That should be posted by the end of the week if all goes well.

[wolverine]

^ Keep us updated on that.

[GRDadof3]

Since this Meijer garnered a lot of attention on here previously, I've moved this discussion to the main GR forum. Apparently talk of building a new store on the golf course property is dead, which is good.

It will interesting to see how they pull this one off. 2 story store tamias, I just don't see the economics at this store to make it worthwhile. But they get major points for reusing the current site and not tearing up a greenfield in that area.

[aowwt]

Well here is what I see. First the property on the southeast corner that cuts into the meijer property is meijer property. Next the gas station across the street well it has two parcels north of it so there is no property north of gas station not owned by meijer. The cul-de-sac on the west of the store property has only one foreclosed property. Hence I doubt they would be buying that out. As for me I worked for Meijer back in the day and I do know that this store does need a tear down and rebuild. Now I took a look at the Grandville Meijer to check the space for trucks to get to unload. It looks like 150 ft is about what they need. So the only problem I see is the current building is gonna need to keep delievers up. Given that most Meijer need 3 trucks a day to operate plus one for bales of cardboard its gonna be interesting. The only thing I could see them doing is redoing the docks on the east side. Given that they could build the store behind the current store and have plenty of space. The docks for the new store will be on the east side and given that the grocery side will be on that side with the general merchandise and garden center on the west side.

[countergirl]

Well here is what I see. First the property on the southeast corner that cuts into the meijer property is meijer property. Next the gas station across the street well it has two parcels north of it so there is no property north of gas station not owned by meijer. The cul-de-sac on the west of the store property has only one foreclosed property. Hence I doubt they would be buying that out. As for me I worked for Meijer back in the day and I do know that this store does need a tear down and rebuild. Now I took a look at the Grandville Meijer to check the space for trucks to get to unload. It looks like 150 ft is about what they need. So the only problem I see is the current building is gonna need to keep delievers up. Given that most Meijer need 3 trucks a day to operate plus one for bales of cardboard its gonna be interesting. The only thing I could see them doing is redoing the docks on the east side. Given that they could build the store behind the current store and have plenty of space. The docks for the new store will be on the east side and given that the grocery side will be on that side with the general merchandise and garden center on the west side.

You get a gold star! That's exactly what it will look like - sorry no two-story here. Only the white house is going. Everything else fits. I don't have any drawings to show

[aowwt]

Well I took a look at the M6 store and uhm that one is too big to fit behind the store. Of course it only needs to be reduced by a small amount. I do believe though that if they try to cut about 1/3 of the depth it will work just fine and widen it out. The only issue I see is having the trucks being off kalamazoo but that will be fine. Outside of that the store is more than feasable. I think looking at the grandville or M6 should give you a great idea on what the size of the store will be. i would expect to see the Pharmacy drive through at the north east corner and probally will be opened when the store opens.

[tamias6]

This is version 1 of what things would be like if Meijer replaced the old 28th street/ k'zoo store with 2 level store. The building totals just a little over 180,000 sq. ft. On the lower level would be groceries, phamcacy/h&b, pet supplies, seasonals, outdoor garden center, books & magazines, and gifts & florals. The upper level would contain most of the general mechindise, clothing, and e4.

Store Front

View of Store from the Christian Reform HQ grounds.

Site Layout (Note: I demoed the vacant furniture store site to the west of the Meijer site to make room for a detention pond and a 4th out lot.)

Site Layout with old store

So far this has been the toughest meijer sketchup model I've ever tackled. But I like this version as it seems to sit well on the site and thus could be doable. But as seen in the last image, the loading docks would present an issue esp. when operations would move to the new store. So I'm going to do a another version to see if I can fix the loading dock issue. However I don't like the idea of the loading docks facing K'zoo or 28th st. as loading docks tend to be unsightly. I can adjust the location and foot print of the building. But I would have to deal with moving or eliminating the Kalamazoo parking lot entrance.

[aowwt]

Tamis could you design the max size for the store with the docks facing kzoo given 150 feet from the street. You can add a nice brick wall with trees on that side. The key thing is how big can it be given a garden center on the west side with no parking. The other thing would be the DT Drug store would also be facing kzoo. That might be the way to go since it would allow cars to avoid having to go through all of the crosswalks to get in the Drive Thru for the pharmacy.

[tamias6]

Tamis could you design the max size for the store with the docks facing kzoo given 150 feet from the street. You can add a nice brick wall with trees on that side. The key thing is how big can it be given a garden center on the west side with no parking. The other thing would be the DT Drug store would also be facing kzoo. That might be the way to go since it would allow cars to avoid having to go through all of the crosswalks to get in the Drive Thru for the pharmacy.

Good suggestion. I just mirrored the store in my sketchup model so the garden center faces the west and the loading docks facing K'zoo. Every thing sseems to work. I've got more than enough room for the loading docks so I have plenty of space to design some screening. Also, this new configuration will allow the three loading docks of the old store just behind the arch to remain operational while the new store is built. So it looks like the loading dock issue is solved. I have to rebuild the parking lot. So it would be a couple of days before I'm ready to post the new version.

However here's a quick post the core revisions.

[aowwt]

those docks would have be redone no matter what. It just does not look like they can build the store at present without some change. If they were to rotate the dock in the present store 90 degrees they could get maybe 4 docks along with the present one that faces that direction. I got the distinct idea that the one dock you labeled is the baler dock. Thats where all the cardboard gets smashed and crushed into nice 6 foot long bales to be recycled. As for the white rectangle I think thats the garbarge chute thing. Its a crusher from my experince. It appears it works off the side of the store but I seen them also work straight out. Granted shutting it down to reconfigure would be a pain but doable. Since to haul away having it go vertical out would save a lot of time.

I also have the distinct idea that they will still go with a single floor store but max the width and depth. I highly doubt they will even need 3/4 the size of the current store. A lot of waste was put into those older stores. The storage areas were pretty wasteful and the newer stores use a lot less. I think just 20 maybe 30 feet along the back and more than likely 50 or so on the kzoo side would be needed for storage space. Outside of that I think if you show a very slender store that will fairly close if not exactly how the new will look like.

I was thinking though, from what I remember I think you would need maybe 4 docks open since the vendors may need a dock as well. I can not remember for sure but that represents a lot of space on the shelves. A clue to how many vendors they are is most soda is vendor, any tag that is single faced is typically vendor. Just going through some of those isles and get to see how much is there. BTW the snacks are mostly vendor as well.

[mejane]

Anyone know how much cleanup will be required from the EPA people bcause of the gas

leaks under the property? All that digging is going to disturb a lot of contaminated soil.

[GR_Urbanist]

Why not just turn the store towards Kalamazoo with a broad driveway in front that could be used as a mini ITP transit center for the many patrons of this store that don't have cars? That way the parking could be put in back of the store where you would enter through a 2nd entrance. When the three out lots are filled, hopefully with urban-like, mixed-use structures, you wont even see the parking lot at all.

I know... THAT"S JUST WACKY TALK!!!

[GRDadof3]

Hey tamias6 and aowwt, countergirl said there will be no 2 story store, so I would take her word for it (she's not JUST a countergirl ).

It's definitely more than feasible, because I believe I know the AE firm working on it right now. As for room to build the new store, your idea aowwt is probably pretty close (moving the docks), plus if they start this in the Fall, the garden center can be closed down for the season and perhaps they can even demolish some of the receiving area in the back. Or maybe even demolish half of that Southern "T" section and consolidate some of that merchandise to other areas.

[aowwt]

actually I do believe they will go single level. I am not sure if I said that before. In anycase I was just trying to see what the max size the store could be as a single level. I am pretty sure that it would large enough.

[tamias6]

actually I do believe they will go single level. I am not sure if I said that before. In anycase I was just trying to see what the max size the store could be as a single level. I am pretty sure that it would large enough.

Be that the case, in that meijer will do a single level store, things get really hairy. So here's the scoop.

So first things first, I made one more attempt to place the 156,000 sq. ft. bear creek store on the site while leaving the old store intact. Note that the Bear Creek Store represents the smallest layout of Meijer's current store prototype.

But as seen here, Its way too big as parts of the store sticks out onto K'zoo Ave. Plus the old stores loading docks are blocked.

So the next option was to do a layout that would take up the whole south east quadrant and solve the loading dock issue with an access drive running along the southern property line.

Even though it fits nicely in the area. There are issues here. One would have to give up the garden center and drive up pharmacy window in order to maintain a typical Meijer store layout. Plus at only 122,000 sq. ft. space would be at a premium. Since meijer would place priority on its biggest money maker, the groceries, general merchandise offerings would be weak due to a lack of space. However, the smallest store in the chain is only a scant 110,000 sq. ft. But the existing 28th street/k'zoo store is 185,000 sq. ft. according to the press article. Going down from that to 110,000 or 120,000 would be too much of a reduction in size no matter how efficiently Meijer makes its layout.

So on to the idea of building a wide but shallow depth building behind the existing store.

With this configuration, the new store's loading docks have their needed 150' clearance while the other end has a garden center and drive up pharmacy. But there are two issues. One is the blockage of most of the old stores loading docks. The other is in order to gain room for the garden center and the new store's loading dock clearance, the new building would be squeezed down to under 97,000 sq. ft. Plus this configuration would be far too shallow for Meijer's current prototype.

Unless Meijer has bought out additional land beyond the residential property on K'zoo to make room for a new store, Meijer will have to forsake its current prototype and do something extraordinary to make the new store work. Or meijer will have no other choice but to take a drastic size reduction at the risk of weak offerings as compared to other roomier meijer stores and competitors. However, the only other way out that I can see though is partially building the new store, opening what's built, demo the old store, then finishing the rest of the new store. I'll have to toy with that idea and see what I can come up with.

[Quercus]

I hope they purchase the strip mall to the west and place the new building's entrances and exits on k-zoo only. Right now the on/off ramps on the 28th street side are chaotic.

Also, this is a prime opportunity for Meijer to flex it's "green arms". Not only will they be reusing an existing site, they could move the gas station to the same property and clean up the old site. Perhaps the old gas station site could be converted to a pocket park, sold to the CRC next door, or restored to native prairie or forest. It's actually a pretty big chunk of property with way too much asphalt behind the mini-mart. The store itself could have a green roof and/or solar panels, the recycling center could be given a major upgrade, the parking lot could be paved with a permeable surface, and as others have mentioned, a decent retention pond could be placed on site to help reduce the runoff into nearby Plaster Creek. Oh and while we're dreaming, they could phase out plastic bags at this Meijer location...

[tamias6]

This might work. The area in red is where the old and new store overlap.

1. Meijer would partially build the new store including the entire grocery section, e4 and some of the retail offerings and open what's there to the public.

2. The old building would be demolished,

3. The sections of the new store in red would then be completed.

This would be a complicated project. But it resolves many of the issues of this site. One, an access road behind the new store would leave three of the old stores rear loading docks functional while leaving the cardboard crusher in place while the new store's loading docks would have their 150' clearance. Two, when the store is complete it would be 156,000 sq. ft. making for enough room for Meijer's smallest layout. Lastly other than parking constrains and the closure of the existing store's garden center cause by construction, customers would not feel the effects of the project until operations moved to the new store.

[e49418]

This might work. The area in red is where the old and new store overlap.

1. Meijer would partially build the new store including the entire grocery section, e4 and some of the retail offerings and open what's there to the public.

2. The old building would be demolished,

3. The sections of the new store in red would then be completed.

I don't know much about construction, but with the way current Meijer stores are built (pre-cast walls, etc.), would that be possible?

[aowwt]

You do understand though that Meijer themselves stated in the article that the old 185k sq ft store is too big for the area. They can easily get better department setups with the newer store size. Plus the size of the docking and storage areas in the older stores IS HUGE by the newer store standards. To compare the size I think at the Grandville Meijer they had 500 sqft of storage just for the days delieveries but they had about 3/4 of the length for store specials in 3 levels. Hence they used effeciancy to the max. The old stores had one huge room to put all of the days delieveries along with the specials that was on the size of over several 1k sq ft. So reducing the size of the stock rooms make the new stores a lot easier to handle. Along with this is the aspect that the department store rooms are smaller but make better usage of space. They are more like galley style versus the square box that the older stores tend to use.

So where a 185 may have 30k for docking and storage the new stores at 156k may have 10k. Personally I think the 28th and kzoo has closer to 40 to 50k for docking and storage.

[aowwt]

Well I went on google earth and figured this out. Going from the edge to the street to the end of the property line is about 780 ft. Given the aspect of some variances lets use 750ft. Now take 150 off the top for the loading dock turn around. Since we only need it at the start of the property line and not where kzoo starts turning into the property near the front of the store it saves us some footage. that leaves us with 600 feet. Now take about 50 feet off for the garden center on the west side. That now leaves us with a wdith of 550 feet. The present space between the back of the property to the present store is about 240. That leaves us say a 225 or so for the store given variances and what not. That leaves us with a pleasent 125k sq ft store. Not a huge store but it is a decent sized store. Now if they were to remove just HALF of the loading dock area during construction of the new store it would add 75 to store and make it a 165k sq ft store. Now removing half of the storage area would present some initial problems and raise costs but at least those cost could be used to offset the means of having a larger store when the replacement is opened, it would also allow them to redo the loading docks at the old store so the trucks can back up instead of the present turn and back, the last aspect is if they build the dock a bit wider say 50ft on the east side they can get the staff ready for the movement to the new layout of the new stores a bit easier. BTW the gas station property is sitting at about 500 feet by a firm 400 ft.

[tamias6]

You do understand though that Meijer themselves stated in the article that the old 185k sq ft store is too big for the area. They can easily get better department setups with the newer store size. Plus the size of the docking and storage areas in the older stores IS HUGE by the newer store standards. To compare the size I think at the Grandville Meijer they had 500 sqft of storage just for the days delieveries but they had about 3/4 of the length for store specials in 3 levels. Hence they used effeciancy to the max. The old stores had one huge room to put all of the days delieveries along with the specials that was on the size of over several 1k sq ft. So reducing the size of the stock rooms make the new stores a lot easier to handle. Along with this is the aspect that the department store rooms are smaller but make better usage of space. They are more like galley style versus the square box that the older stores tend to use.

So where a 185 may have 30k for docking and storage the new stores at 156k may have 10k. Personally I think the 28th and kzoo has closer to 40 to 50k for docking and storage.

Well I went on google earth and figured this out. Going from the edge to the street to the end of the property line is about 780 ft. Given the aspect of some variances lets use 750ft. Now take 150 off the top for the loading dock turn around. Since we only need it at the start of the property line and not where kzoo starts turning into the property near the front of the store it saves us some footage. that leaves us with 600 feet. Now take about 50 feet off for the garden center on the west side. That now leaves us with a wdith of 550 feet. The present space between the back of the property to the present store is about 240. That leaves us say a 225 or so for the store given variances and what not. That leaves us with a pleasent 125k sq ft store. Not a huge store but it is a decent sized store. Now if they were to remove just HALF of the loading dock area during construction of the new store it would add 75 to store and make it a 165k sq ft store. Now removing half of the storage area would present some initial problems and raise costs but at least those cost could be used to offset the means of having a larger store when the replacement is opened, it would also allow them to redo the loading docks at the old store so the trucks can back up instead of the present turn and back, the last aspect is if they build the dock a bit wider say 50ft on the east side they can get the staff ready for the movement to the new layout of the new stores a bit easier. BTW the gas station property is sitting at about 500 feet by a firm 400 ft.

120,000 sq. ft. is not out of the question. It could be done. Meijer's smallest store ever was 110k. Though I'm not curtain if it still exists intact or not. But still there are some big obstacles to deal with

From what I could tell, the width of the access drive running along the rear of new meijer stores is about 24'. This allows for two way traffic. The space between your configuration and the south property line would amount to about fifteen feet which is very narrow considering that semis would need to run though there to access the old stores remaining loading docks.

The 225' depth of your building does slip neatly behind the existing store. However the depth is an issue. Going from back to front let's add up the following 46' of the stock room behind the grocery section + 12' of space for asile 15 + 196' for aisles 1-14 + 78' for the produce area + 18' for the cafe, deli, and delicious to go work areas we get a depth of 350'. Most of the new Meijer stores built using the David Rockwell design store prototype measure roughly 350'-360' deep. Checking out the Gains Twp. store it measures about 360' deep while the M-6/ K'zoo store is 350' deep. Even my model of the proposed Bear Creek Store which I've based on actual renderings complete with measurements comes in at 346' deep. not including the walmart style cart rooms unique to this store.

So to squeeze in the grocery section into a 225' depth one would need to take cues from Maijer at Cascade's grocery section layout. In that store the grocery section is divided in two by an action alley running from front to back. On one side are the grocery aisles while on the other side along the side wall are the dairy, tea, beer & wine, and soft drink sections arranged in boutique like alcoves. This reduced the number of standard aisles in that store making room for additional products along the back of the sales floor and the enlarged produce area. The traverse city Meijer is a wide but shallow store and thus uses Meijer at cascades arrangements to compensate for the shallowness. But at 323' deep the Traverse city store is not that much shallower than most other stores.

However the disadvantage of splitting the grocery section in two is space. When the Cascade Meijer was transformed into Meijer at Cascade the grocery section encroached a whopping 50 feet into the retail section of the store while carving about 14' into the stock rooms running along the loading dock side of the building. However Meijer at Cascade was deep enough allow the designers to push most of the sales floor's rear wall further back to make up for space taken up by the enlarged grocery section. At your configuration's 225' depth pushing the sales floor's rear wall back like this would not be possible as there would practically be no stock room.

So splitting the grocery section in two would be very difficult but not impossible if store designers play their cards right.

In short. If I were to design a store layout to fit your configuration I would throw Meijer's standard store prototype out the window. Instead I would place priority on the grocery section as in my opinion groceries is what Meijer does best. So I would give the grocery section all the space it needed to be top notch Then I would pare down the retail offerings to the bare essentials to fit into what ever amount of space is left over.